Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network (MDCSN)
Theory Reading Group
Meeting 9: Thursday 28 June 2007 4-5.30pm
Text: Gayatri Gopinath, 'Impossible Desires. An Introduction' and 'Surviving Naipaul. Housing Masculinity in A House for Mr. Biswas, Surviving Sabu and East is East' in Impossible Desires. Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. (Durham/ London: Duke University Press, 2005) 1-28 and 63-92.
In this text Gayatri Gopinath rethinks the conventional diasporic focus, suggesting the concept of queer diasporas as an enabling voice for previously 'impossible' subject positions. By taking as her starting point queer female subjectivity in the diaspora Gopinath develops a concept of diaspora apart from ideas of authenticity and 'the oedipal relation' which, she argues, habitually form the core of a conventional diasporic focus. She shows how the framework of a queer diaspora reorients the traditional diasporic imaginary's nostalgic focus on the past, mobilising past, memory and nostalgia and recuperating desires, practices, and subjectivities rendered 'impossible' within the dominant diasporic and nationalist imaginaries (where e.g. female diasporic subjectivity is still 'fixed'.
The introduction provides definitions for the terminology from the book's title. Queer Diasporas combines two fields of thought: Diaspora foregrounds inauthenticity and therefore goes against the 'pure' notion of the nation, while alternative sexualities challenge patriarchy. The concept of a queer South Asian diaspora implies a) that the formation of sexual subjectivity is situated within 'transnational flows of culture, capital, bodies, desire and labour' b) that the relational situating of the terms 'queer' and 'diaspora' as dependent on the originality of 'heterosexuality' and 'nation' is contested. Joining 'queer' and 'diaspora' allows for everything not available in the conventional diasporic/national imaginary c) that the Euro-American homonormative discourse's centring of the white gay male is disturbed. In that dominant discourse the racialised queer is seen as 'backward' and 'non-political' (as is the colonised in colonial narratives). The notion of queer diasporas disturbs the dominant categories of 'gay' and 'lesbian,' bringing into play a 'different economy of desire' that 'escapes legibility' both within normative South Asian contexts and homonormative Euro-American contexts.
Impossibility encapsulates the unthinkability of the queer female subject position in the nation and the diaspora, where dominant ideologies invest in keeping this position impossible, and where 'woman' is invested as a boundary marker. Both gay male and liberal feminist discourses are viewed as potentially colluding with dominant national and diasporic discourse. Queerness emerges as an alternative hermeneutic available to those thought of as 'impossible.'
South Asian Public Culturesrefers to cultural forms through which queer subjects articulate new modes of being, at the same time defying conventional nationalist and Euro-American homonormative sexual alterity. The 'queer diasporic archive' is seen to be fragmented because it is constantly 'under erasure' from dominant historical narratives.
The discussion focused initially on our understanding of Gopinath's definition of 'queer subjects' and it was agreed that this was a broad category, challenging fixed terms, and that Gopinath was thus adopting/advocating queer reading practices as a deconstructive force, unravelling the 'nation' and the 'diaspora' through a process of translation. The double interrogation of the nation and the traditional diaspora (and in particular the patriarchal nature of the latter, as encapsulated in the origins of the word diaspora, which Gopinath highlights) was held to be a strong point of the discourse.
At the same time, however, an issue was raised regarding the notion that the focus on the opposition of diaspora/nation may not be valid for all diasporas (e.g. particularly not for the Italian diaspora, who identify the region of origin as 'home', and don't have the concept of 'Italy as nation' as 'home'). It was questioned whether the idea of nation-building arises from colonialism.
A further point of discussion was Gopinath's interrogation of the notion of home: usually the place to be escaped from in dominant homonormative discourse, but here in a queer diasporic reading seen as a space to be remade from within.
Kate Roy